EFF launched Canarywatch.org testimonial “Canary testimony”

The human rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University Research Center on Cyberspace), the University of New York and Calyx.net launched CanaryWatch.org , whose goal is to track the "testimony of canary" on various sites - method of transmitting information through silence or denial.

Many public organizations, especially those whose work is related to the processing of personal data of users, publish special documents about how such processing is carried out. Here, for example, Google's report , where you can get acquainted with the statistics of requests from government agencies to transfer information about users to them: from it follows that at the beginning of 2014 the search giant revealed data about about 31 thousand accounts.

Recently, Microsoft told that they handed over to the French government the electronic correspondence of those suspected of being shot by the editors of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. However, according to the US Patriotic Act, an organization may receive a court order with instructions in which it is prohibited for it to disclose the fact of such receipt. Typically, these orders are designed to perform "measures to protect national security," which implies the secret surveillance of users.

Paragraph 215 of the US Patriotic Act, adopted after the terrorist attack of September 11, is the basis for monitoring electronic correspondence and phone calls - the existence of such programs became known thanks to the testimony of Edward Snowden. He stated that people are being monitored with the assistance of Internet companies, and the NSA pays them for access to correspondence and user files. The FBI has a specially developed Carnivore program to monitor online users - its use “in emergency cases” can be started by bureau officers without a warrant issued by a prosecutor’s office.
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Probably, if it were not for the evidence of Snowden, the Internet companies would not mind keeping any NSA prescriptions secret and complying with them. However, the privacy scandals of users forced many heads of companies to justify that no espionage is actually conducted. In November 2013, Apple, in its Transparency Report, placed a reference to the fact that the company does not perform any actions permitted in paragraph 215 of the Patriotic Act. If such a document had been received, but in the next report the mention of this would have disappeared. This principle is called “testimony of the canary.”

CanaryWatch.org is designed to track such cases: employees will track any changes in “canary testimonials” on websites and regularly update the Canary List. So far, it is very small and of the large companies in it can be noted only Reddit and Pinterest. For each site there is a link to the document, which reports the absence of instructions for surveillance and the date of verification of this document. Thus, it will be possible to promptly judge the company's actions.